NSR: A gun on Every Corner: Discuss the NRA, Gun Ownership and All Those Non-Mass Shootings..

Upon further review, I can imagine it being permitted at a couple of places I've been, but only through the fiat of a state legislature, and not an administrative mandate. Thst is, I can imagine the government of Louisiana or Arizona passing a law encouraging it, but I can't imagine most of the faculty at LSU, Southern, or Pima County Community College going along.

 

We Mexican centrists have to do better

 

I did not create the poll, may bad people can't handle facts that go against their preconceived ideas.

Yes we Mexicans need to do better in many ways, like this topic.

http://remezcla.com/culture/afro-mexicans-legal-recognition-constitution-mexico/

 

Not to make this a latinoamerican racial thread. But the Mrs, who's been out of Colombia now longer than she lived there, recently got into a beef with family members down there over El Son de Negro. I had no odea what it was either so below is some background on it. Apparently a big thing at the Carnaval in Barranquilla. Her family thought she was being overly sensitive about people running around Carnaval in blackface. Just people having some fun!

A white, politically correct Canadian of Venezuelan and Colombian descent, fresh from an art history course on the image of the African American in visual culture, I arrived in Barranquilla to visit my extended family.

Driving with my cousin from the airport, meandering through the chaos created by motto-taxis and colorful chiva buses, I encountered my first peculiarity: El Son de Negro. In front of a shopping center stood a gargantuan billboard of what looked like a stereotypical "coon," a caricature with origins in the visual culture of the slave trade. Dressed up in what looked to me like his blackface best, the character’s exaggerated red lips and self-deprecating goofiness all screamed of minstrelsy.

My relatives tried to assure me otherwise. El Son de Negro simultaneously refers to a traditional dance and is the name of one of the characters prominent in Barranquilla’s bacchanalian carnival. He is regarded as a symbol of slave defiance over the Spanish conquistadors, who are represented in Carnaval by the amusing Rey Momo.

I, the gringa, found this explanation difficult to grasp, especially in the context of a culture in which terms like "negro/a" are often used to identify Afro-Latinos. My family, like most Latin Americans I have spoken to, sees nothing wrong with using terms like "negro/a" to describe black people because they are often employed as terms of cariño, or endearment: “hola mi negra bella”; “mi negro, un café, por favor.” (As a parallel example, I was called gordita - little fat one - as a child.) My dissatisfaction with what I’ll call the cariño defense is that the use of those terms is not necessarily motivated by tenderness. Often they are used out of frustration with a black or mixed-race individual, as in “ay, ese negro!” The debate on intent is irrelevant, really, but it nonetheless was the focal point of what became nightly discussions with my relatives about what is and isn’t racist.

Afro-Latino specialist Leonardo Reales (the 25-year old who used to be unaware of Biohó) knows all too well how complicated Afro-Colombian identity can get. For Reales, to use terms like "negro/a" or "zambo" - a person of mixed African and Amerindian heritage - is to reinforce the casta system, a classification system used by Spanish and Portuguese colonials to categorize social standing by race. Why use terms to define yourself that were originally used by colonials to subjugate African slaves and indigenous peoples? It’s like that American word one dares not say.



Welcome to the Barranquilla Country Club

According to the last national census, conducted in 2005, Afro-Colombians make up 10.6% of the total population, about 4.3 million people. But these figures should be taken with a grain of salt. Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics recorded only 502,343 Afro-Colombians in its 1993 census, roughly 1.52% of Colombia’s total population. A few years later, Colombia’s Department of National Planning said that Afro-Colombians made up 26.5% of the total population, approximately 12 million people. “There are self-identification issues,” says Reales, “The one drop rule in the United States works the opposite way in Colombia,” as in Colombians, like many Latin Americans, will cling to that drop of white blood.

http://conversationson.blogspot.com/2013/08/being-black-in-colombia-curious-son-de.html?m=1

Some more examples:

 

My wife is a teacher in a special ed preschool. The thought of her carrying a gun is really terrifying. Despite any amount of training, she's the last one that should be armed.

 

I was a teacher for three and a half years, two years at a tiny little high school out in bum******** nowhere, western Kansas, and a year and a half at a much more diverse, lower middle class-ish high school in suburban KC. I could never, ever point a gun at one of my students and pull the trigger. Holy shit.

 

And wouldn't that be the point.

There's a huge segment of the right that would love this. They are, after all, the ones who feel threatened by the liberalism of college campuses, promote education-free home schooling, grudgingly accept microevolution but not evolution, dispute global warming (despite not being scientists), consider the NEA to be Public Enemy #1, thought segregated schools to be perfectly acceptable, and rabidly support a president who lies about the most obvious things.

I couldn't have even posted this in jest two years ago. But now I don't think this is remotely far-fetched.

 

The NRA is the marketing arm for American gun manufacturers and dealers. Arming teachers isn't about protecting people, it's about selling guns.

 

We know that, but 40% of U.S. voters do not. Well, that's not quite accurate -- I think a good chunk of them know in their hearts that arming teachers is a terrible idea, but they won't actively oppose it if the President is for it.

 

La Pierre gave a rousing and long winded monolog to his faithful, frenzied followers. Preaching to the choir of poor beaten down gun owners who have been in hiding this past week. Some even destroying their people killing weapons.

Rise up, remember the god given second amendment be proud. Don't let the Obama emboldened liberal democrats and immigrants take away your rights and freedom.

Blah blah blah.

Footnote here. Thousands of AR15s have been sold this past week in fear of a ban assault weapons, to join the already 5 to 10 million. (Estimated, no one seems to have an accurate count) AR15s already in the hands of gun owners. There are over 300,000,000 guns of all types, sizes, calibres an colours in this country.

How the hell is anyone going to controll or bring some sort of order to that?

 

There's something over 40 million potholes in America's roads-- probably way over--does that number constitute an argument against filling any of them?

If we stop or slow adding to the guns already there, and enact reasonable regulation, those 300 million will bleed out-- some will get lost, some will be damaged, some will go into collections and museums, entirely too many into evidence lockers and the bottom of rivers every year-- but over time, the number will diminish.

It ain't a toggle-- you can't just pass a law and the problem disappears. But we owe it to your kids to make a start, and leave them at least somewhat more manageable a situation.

 

Couple of thoughts here:

1. Depending on the laws that are enacted, not all of the firearms would necessarily become illegal. If we take the licensing model similar to Canada, there would be a graduated licensing system that would allow people to get licensed for various levels of firearms that, in most cases, wouldn't impact the people that have hunting rifles, shotguns, and most handguns.

2. An extensive buyback and destruction program coupled with the licensing and registering would put a serious dent into the number of restricted and prohibited firearms. It'll cost $10s to $100s of billions to do, but the cost savings from various reductions in other areas would likely offset the cost.

3. Time. Firearms will go off the market as they are seized and destroyed by the police, as they become non-functional due to use, abuse, misuse, or neglect, they'll get lost or forgotten, etc, etc.

 

You can't get any more tone-deaf than this. I don't even know what to say, except that this organization is as close to pure evil as exists in the U.S., outside of Nazis and the KKK -

"The mainstream media love mass shootings. I'm going to say it again; the mainstream media love mass shootings…and you, the #MSM, just put out the casting call for the next mass shooter." @MrColionNoir #NRA pic.twitter.com/1XtqVoA23l

— NRATV (@NRATV) February 22, 2018

 

I'm not going to watch the video as I'm sure they go off the rails at some point.. However, it would be beneficial if the media completely ignored the shooter and/or their causes. A good percentage of mass shooters are interested in the attention that such shootings will draw to themselves and/or causes. If that were cut off, the motivation would, in some cases, go away.

 

i cant' wait until Suicide By Teacher becomes a thing. thanks NRA!!

 

As the guiltiest party in the guilt chain, and unwilling to repent, the NRA is in no position to do anything but shut up and hide. I don't want to hear from the NRA how others could be doing better.

 

Oh shit, the dutch of latin America.

Yeah, we do have a history of bitching about racism from the gringos and then turning around and be racist toward blacks Amerindians and others.

 

Well many Latinos come from rural lands, but the us born grow up in urban areas, i do have many family members with guns in their homes but I am surprised that the support for a ban is lower than whites.

 

So no one is talking about the fact that it has today floated the brilliant idea of paying teachers bonuses for carrying guns in schools?

 

I saw that. What an unbelievably stupid suggestion. It's like he's going out of his way to be provocative.

 

Soo.. Where are they going to get the funding for this arming the teachers initiative? They can't even afford to make sure the school's have enough of some pretty basic school supplies and now they want to give teachers guns and/or pay them bonuses to carry?